By Betty Mills

Aware that the theme of this issue of Inspired Woman would be about the women who had coached and mentored us, I wondered, “Who coached me?”  That put me in a reflective mood, coupled with a sentimental journey through the refuse which lingers in my storage room under the guise of family treasures.

In a probably futile attempt to sort through the accumulation of several lifetimes—my own, my husband’s, my in-laws, my mother’s—I found a letter written years ago by the widow of the minister who served our church when I was a teenager full of the doubts and questions that today might be labeled teenage angst.

He was on summer leave from Yale Divinity School when he showed up in our small town in the middle of rural North Dakota. “What were they thinking back in Yale?” must have occurred to the church elders. He was young and single. He spoke fluent French—now there’s a vital talent in the middle of rural and western North Dakota. His background was strictly urban—Boston, New Haven.

In those inexplicable currents which flow through human lives, he fell in love with North Dakota, with its rural beauty and lifestyle, its rolling hills, and, most of all, with us, we, his parishioners and their families, the community. Supposedly he was there on a summer assignment, but he stayed for nearly five years. If you, like me, get weary of explaining to people why you are happy to be a North Dakotan, he was a gift.

Immersing himself in the life he found so appealing, he worked for a day on my dad’s thrashing crew, persuaded my once Lutheran mother to join the church and put her on the committee to remodel the church basement, started the first youth group in the church, and answered any question we threw at him. When the Boy Scout Troop needed a summer camp leader, he volunteered. When the high school history teacher quit mid-term, he took her place.

He persuaded me to take him and his visiting Divinity School roommate rattlesnake hunting—a challenge to qualify me to lead an African safari. The roommate fired his rifle point blank at the rock by which the snakes were sunning, and I witnessed my first view of ministerial outrage along with the recognition that Rev. Munsey had become one of us.

When he and our high school coach, who had once been a Minneapolis newspaper reporter, created a weekly advertising publication, they hired me to type the stencils. I was a junior in high school by then, and for several hours a week I fell under their conversational spell, and in retrospect realize they had very subtly set themselves up as my personal advisors.

And what did I learn from them? In addition to diligence on the job and commitment to agreement, I listened to fascinating discussions of literature, history, politics, the value of a college education—and the merits of adult wisdom. Even at the time I recognized the privilege of being taken under such wise wings.

When World War II ended, Rev. Munsey left to go to France under the auspices of a Quaker and Congregational church organization to assist in refugee aid. He was sent to a small village at the edge of the Swiss border, a community that has subsequently had two books written about it because under the leadership of a Lutheran minister, the community’s organized efforts saved thousands of Jewish refugees from being murdered by the Nazis, especially the children.

Rev. Munsey returned to finish his Divinity degree, married, and served churches on the west coast. But he never lost his love of North Dakota and had signed on to serve a church in Medina when he suffered a fatal heart attack.

By the time we recognize who the mentors were in our lives, it is often too late to thank them, but here’s to the wise ones who taught us how to turn on the lights in our lives.

Betty Mills

Betty Mills was a weekly political columnist for the Bismarck Tribune for 25 years. She grew up on a farm near Glen Ullin, where she learned to drive tractor and hunt rattlesnakes. At 90, she has been a mentor to an untold number of people.